New Floors - Day 1

This is the same story as with the stairs.  The goal here is to document the current state of things.  Our floors are in a state of disaster.  They are old, falling apart, dirty, and dangerous.  I know that sounds a little over the top, but there are carpet tacks sticking out of bare plywood.  My kids keep stepping on them, and every time we find one, we hammer it down, but another one pops up.  So, this is past due.  (Just because we're doing this, however, don't assume we aren't grateful for what we do have - a wonderful family, a roof over our heads, our own business, my teaching, a great view . . . the list goes on and on.  But these floors just need to go.)

Here's the aforementioned culprit.  This is the fault of the mostly feral cats that we brought into our house when our oldest was only 6 months old.  The kittens (at the time) were only 3 weeks old and I hand fed them with bottled formula and taught them how to use a litter box, and so I'm invested in them.  But they are also demons.  Demons that did this.

"Oh, what a great place to put your shoes by the front door," you say?  Certainly this area rug is in place only to catch the dirt of the shoes to keep the house clean.

 Or maybe it's hiding the ridiculously gnawed, ripped, shredded, disappearing carpet transition.

 And then there's the brown tile, because, why?

This one might actually be our fault.  When we redid the kitchen floor we might have cut this accidentally.  But I can own up to it.

The cats did it.

 This is actually on the second landing of the stairs.  Anywhere those little b$@#^%&s can find a piece of carpet peeling even the slightest bit up, they go at it like it's a an anchovy wrapped in bacon stuffed in a salmon steak served on a bed of whale blubber and garnished with parsley (for the plating.)

And heaven help you if one of the cats gets accidentally (by their own doing) shut in the master bedroom.  The one on the inside will claw mercilessly at the carpet until released while the one on the outside will claw equally mercilessly at the carpet to terrorize the one that is locked in.  Either that or they are both convinced the other is having more fun on the other side and therefore must reach them.  At.  All.  Costs.

 Some wider views meant to show you two things.
1. We have crappy floors.
2. We have a heck of a mess to clean up before we can get new floors.

For instance, not only do we need to clean up and stow the books and toys and lamps and tables, but that beauty in the back corner is an upright piano.  Oh boy.

 I am also going to clean and remove the area rugs under the coffee table . . .

and the dining room table to be brought back when the floors are completed.  I'm not sure how the area rug works after that.  Right now, the one in the living room is covering up some cords and a huge stain from where I dropped a bucket of primer once . . .

The rug under the dining room table is in better shape and covering up less, but I'm not sure if it is big enough to hold our entire table and chair set up without the feet going off of the edge.  I will have to see what happens when the floors are done and make a decision.  Until now, I will clean it and store it.

The carpet in the kids room is miraculously unscathed.  But it doesn't make sense to replace everything else and not do their room, so it is getting an overhaul as well.  New carpet pad, at the least, should be a really nice change.

 Not too much to pick up off the ground, but I will have to empty that dresser and both closet floors, as the carpet goes all the way underneath the shelves in the closets.

The master bedroom is a different story.  I have to remove and store ALL of those books, photos, negatives, and knick knacks so that the bookshelves themselves can be moved.  SPF and I have already decided that everything goes out, and nothing comes back in until it has been evaluated and placed into 1 of four piles:
1 - Keep
2 - Sell
3 - Give Away
4 - Trash

I'm hoping this whole process allows us to reduce our stuff and live a simpler life.  I detest clutter, but I also love artifacts and physical, tangible media like books, records, photos, and letters.  I don't want to lose those things, I just want to be able to store them a little better.  This is madness.  (Un-anchored madness, by the way.  So when the big one hits, we're toast under a pile of Kafka, Steiglitz, Rowling, and Mom.  (The latter being hand written letters that I've kept for years.)  So, that's the other thing we have decided to do - find a good, permanent location for the bookshelves and anchor them into the wall so that we can suffer for months in the apocalypse instead of dying all at once.